Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

Somebody remind me why we put up with Erdogan and give him a seat at the big kids' table?
My immediate reaction, from having watched various works of fiction on the Cuban Missile Crisis, is that it's because the US wants to be able to put missiles in Turkey.

I do realize that it may be a bad idea to get my geopolitical knowledge from X-Men: First Class.
 
Finland and Sweden harbor PKK members, which Turkey considers terrorists.

While I'd personally be perfectly fine kicking Turkey out - modern day Erdogan is a Putin fan, an autocrat, and a despot - Turkey had the second largest standing army in NATO (guess who's number 1;)), controls access to the Black sea, and has our main land border with Syria, Iran, and Iraq, housing pretty much all our important naval and airforce bases in the cross from the Mediterranean and Central Asia. It's geostrategical location is unsurpassed. It's not going anywhere.
 
Fox News, OAAN, or Newsmax?
I was actually wondering whether it would end up being "homeless panhandler in wheelchair" because once he's out from under the public (R) umbrella, I figure his former cronies will push him down. Hard.

--Patrick
 
Fox News, OAAN, or Newsmax?
Considering the "crimes" he got ousted for... you know, not the many, ACTUAL crimes he committed, but possibly being gay and "besmirching" the GOP with his drugs/orgy talk, I doubt he's going to be welcomed at any of those places.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Slovakian watches video about American Suburbs, and has a lot of questions



My favorite response to this is the political alignment graph of the questions

 

GasBandit

Staff member


Elon Musk is worth $230b. So, to put it in perspective, if he was a millionaire, this would be like paying $1.09. If his net worth was $200k, a somewhat reasonable amount for a typical homeowner, the payout would have been the equivalent of 22 cents.
 
Some other pages I frequent are now, of course, overflowing with "look, the democrats started their smear campaign the second he said he was Republican! The MSM can't be trusted, it's just a Democratic propaganda machine!" and...Yeah, the logic "he knew it was coming" is so obivous and easy that I just don't know what to reply to those idiots.

Also, while I know Musk is popular with a lot of people for some reason (same reason as Steve Jobs and such I guess? I never got his appeal, either), I don't think a lot of people ever put him in the "democrat" column. Social libertarian, pehaps.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
In news that should not surprise anyone: Bombshell 400-page report finds Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual abuse survivors

"For 20 years, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention ... routinely silenced and disparaged sexual abuse survivors, ignored calls for policies to stop predators, and dismissed reforms that they privately said could protect children but might cost the SBC money if abuse victims later sued.

...

“Survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its (structure) — even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation,” Guidepost’s report concluded.

...

"Among the findings:
  • A small group of SBC leaders routinely misled other members of the SBC’s executive committee on abuse issues, and rarely mentioned the frequent and persistent warnings and pleas for help from survivors. Fearing lawsuits, leaders similarly failed to inform the SBC’s 15 million members that predators and pedophiles were targeting churches.
  • Longtime SBC leaders kept a private list of abusive pastors and ministers despite claiming for years that such an idea was impractical for stopping predators and impossible to adopt because of the SBC’s decentralized structure. Compiled since 2007, the roster contained the names of 703 offenders, most with an SBC connection. A few still work at churches in the SBC or other denominations.
  • Former SBC President Johnny Hunt is accused of sexually assaulting a woman weeks after his presidential tenure ended in 2010. The woman said Hunt manipulated her into silence by saying a disclosure of the incident would harm the SBC’s churches. Four other people corroborated much of the woman’s allegations to Guidepost. Hunt denied the allegations, but resigned from the SBC’s North American Mission Board days before the report was published.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Isn't Kansas landlocked like with a 2 state buffer from any border?
Yes. The only time that Kansas could ever have conceivably been called a "border" state (and it'd REALLY have been a stretch) was when Oklahoma was simply designated "Indian Territory" in the 19th century.

I can only assume that the GOP wants to give Texas and Oklahoma to Mexico, and only Biden stands in their way.
 
Well, the Mizzou-kansas rivalry game is called the Border War dating back to when the states were at war over the issue of slavery.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Remind your local Republican they're not supposed to be trying to use "Bin Ladin agrees with me!" as a supporting argument.

 

GasBandit

Staff member

“…. Recall, for instance, that back in November of 2020, it wasn’t clear there were five votes at the Supreme Court to support the proposition that state legislatures could simply set aside election results they deemed tainted by impropriety. Recall that when lawyer/insurrectionists John Eastman (a Thomas clerk) and Jeffrey Bossert Clark floated that notion at the White House and elsewhere, serious DOJ attorneys told them in no uncertain terms to go away. Recall finally that one of the lawmakers in Arizona, Shawnna Bolick, is married to a state Supreme Court justice and is parent to Clarence Thomas’ godchild. Bolick, as Jane Mayer of the New Yorker reported in 2021, later introduced legislation that “would enable a majority of the legislature to override the popular vote … and dictate the state’s electoral college votes itself.” In other words, what Bolick couldn’t lawfully do in 2020 is a thing she hopes to do under color of law in future. Oh, and Bolick is now running for secretary of state, the office that oversees state elections.

The New York Times reported this weekend on the proliferation of Bolick’s fellow travelers: election-deniers seeking or holding office in states that will decide the winner of the 2024 presidential race. According to their tally, at least 357 sitting Republican legislators in swing states “have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.” That number amounts to “44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided.” Moreover, election deniers around the country are running for secretary of state and attorney general—vying to be swing states’ top election officer and top cop, respectively. If successful, they can use this power to aggressively investigate bogus claims of voter fraud, attempt to nullify Democratic ballots, refuse to certify the true results, and even try to approve an “alternative” slate of electors for the loser. This is what Ginni Thomas was pushing two years ago, and what her husband has already deemed constitutionally permissible.”
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Just in case anybody in your Social Medias is smugly blaming the baby formula shortage on Biden -




Nearly 200 Republicans vote against bill to ease baby formula shortage
That doesn't really track... Specifically the article is about the new NAFTA agreement containing language that would prevent or restrict the opening of a new plant in Kingston, ON. The plant is open today. Chuck Schumer is also named as being opposed to Canada's dairy protectionism, so the blame wouldn't be all on Trump anyway.

The current baby formula shortage is largely due to the shuttering of one factory due to the discovery of a bacteria on-site. The current shortage, regardless of blame, is not connected to the reporting in that article.
 
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